old italian frames: brands to look for?

hi all,
i was wondering, what are some decent italian frame-makers? i see a lot of italian-sounding frames on ebay and craigslist (olmo, debernardi, serrota, colnago, etc) but since i'm not very familiar with italian bikes, i never know which ones are good and which ones aren't. are there any (preferably not super expensive brands) that i should be on the lookout for? thanks!

hi all,
i was wondering, what are some decent italian frame-makers? i see a lot of italian-sounding frames on ebay and craigslist (olmo, debernardi, serrota, colnago, etc) but since i'm not very familiar with italian bikes, i never know which ones are good and which ones aren't. are there any (preferably not super expensive brands) that i should be on the lookout for? thanks!

Sheldon Brown has a handy guide to pricing for vintage lightweights if you are looking for an older bike. The prices are outdated but the info on the history and quality of frames is very useful.

I actually found my guerciotti track frame in a bike junkyard of sorts...i stripped and rebuilt it, with the only original part being the campy bb....its an incredibly fun fixie to ride...lightweight and fast

What an awesome bike a Guerciotti is. Do you have one with pantographed parts? I dream of someday owning one with a full campy pantograph set... Someday!

my friend got a pinarello roadie with all pantographed campy...and it was stolen the same night he bought it, along with his harry havnoonian track/work bike...i hwas having a party that night, and he was invited too. if he would've come to my party, he'd probably still have the pinarello.

he got the HH back, never saw the pinarello again...but then he got a merlin Ti frame for like, $800 and set it up with full '03 record and ksyriums...then he got another merlin for $500 and was gonna set it up with older dura ace 8 speed as a "winter work bike." last i heard he was gonna sell both of them because he hadn't built up the second, and he never rode the first....

I had a Tommasini road bike that I converted to fixie. Unfortunately, the headtube cracked right above the bottom lug - right in the heat affected zone.

Right now I have a very flashy Faggin (pronounced fajeen with a smoothed j) converted to fix. I dig it b/c it's very loud visually - pantographed seatpost, stem, crankarms, and chainring. But, I can see that the frame was put to together like crap. Beware of crappy italian quality from the 80's.